As internet protocol (IP) based networks continue to evolve, an increasing amount of voice and video media traffic is transported. An important functionality of these networks is the transmission of audio and video data using the Real Time Transport (RTP) protocol. RTP is connectionless User Datagram Protocol (UDP) based, and lacks some of the performance management capabilities of connection oriented Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Without the performance management provided by TCP, UDP traffic is vulnerable to network anomalies making accurate classification of RTP difficult.
Interruption to RTP transmissions can cause impairments detrimental to a user's experience. Data quality measurement and fault analysis rely substantially on accurate classification of RTP. This is made difficult by several characteristics of RTP traffic. First, a large number of ports capable of utilizing RTP may also be used my other applications and transport protocols. Additionally, anomalies in RTP traffic, such as dropped and out of sequence packets, make it difficult for a classification algorithm to correctly identify RTP traffic.